Nature 203, 322 - 323 (18 July 1964); doi:10.1038/203322a0

Inhibition and Excitation in the Acoustic Behaviour of Pholidoptera

M. D. R. JONES

Department of Biology, Brunel College, London, W.3, and Department of Botany and Zoology, Sir John Cass College, London, E.C.3.

EXPERIMENTS on the 'bush cricket', Pholidoptera griseoaptera (De Geer), using artificial signals¹ have shown that these have an inhibitory effect on chirping. Further work has shown that the chirping of one male has a similar inhibitory effect on other males. In addition to their inhibitory effect, artificial signals increase the overall chirp rate and alter the timing of chirps so that they tend to occur in the first second after the end of the inhibitory period. These excitatory effects are shown when the total basic chirp rate is below 30 per min; the signals actually depress the chirp rate when it is high.

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